What next?!

Spot the difference between the Labour Party today and the Tory Party of 20-25 years ago - if you can. First, a minister suggests that council tenants should be evicted if they don’t look for a job. Now, an ex-minister proposes that schoolkids should have to swear an oath of allegiance to the queen when they leave school. Clearly, over 10 years’ experience of governing capitalism has led to them completely absorbing capitalist values and priorities.

“Pupils ‘to take allegiance oath’”, read the headline of a new item on the BBC website:

“School-leavers should be encouraged to swear an oath of allegiance to Queen and country, says a report commissioned by Gordon Brown on British citizenship. Report author, ex-attorney general Lord Goldsmith, says it would give teenagers a sense of belonging” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7287984.stm).

The Daily Telegraph (10 March) had already explained what might be involved:

“The proposals are similar to the classroom ritual in America in which children make a pledge to the national flag, while standing to attention with the right hand of the heart”.

Next they’ll be bringing back playing the national dirge in cinemas and expecting everyone to stand up for it.

The queen is the figurehead of the British capitalist state. So, swearing allegiance to her is swearing allegiance to that state. But why should we have to pledge loyalty to an institution that doesn’t represent our interests, but those of the rich few who own the means of production? Maybe they should, but not the rest of us who, with no other source of income, have to sell our working skills for a wage or a salary.

They want us to do this as it’s in their interest that we should accept their rule and accept the legitimacy of what their state does in their interest, especially military interventions abroad to protect their sources of raw materials, markets, investment outlets and trade routes.

(And of course Lord Goldsmith was the man who as attorney-general came up with clever lawyer arguments as to why the invasion of Iraq five years ago was perfectly OK).

Inculcating “Britishness” into us, especially when we are young, is part of the conditioning process to make us loyal subjects of the British capitalist state. Socialists reject and oppose this. We don’t see ourselves as “British” or “German” or “American” or whatever. We belong to the international working class and want to see a world no longer divided into competing, armed states but one where all will be citizens of a united world, members of a united human race, Earthpeople.

We reject nationalism and its ridiculous, xenophobic ceremonies and rituals.

The BBC quoted one teachers’ union official as saying that the proposal was “a half-baked idea that should be left to go mouldy”. Hopefully, that’s what will happen.

ALB